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New Visions for Library Spaces: Jim Eyre, Transforming an Oxford Library into a 21st-Century Center of Learning”

March/7,/2016

Monday

12:00PM – 01:30PM

Stubbins (Room 112), Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Free and open to the public

Stirling Prize-winning architect Jim Eyre will deliver a talk on the transformation of the New Bodleian Library into the Weston Library of the University of Oxford. This $125 million renovation changed a drab book fortress into a scholar’s paradise and major civic space. Jim Eyre’s genius was to open the library up to the outside while simultaneously creating spaces dedicated to the use of special collections and their storage.

Jim Eyre is a founding director at WilkinsonEyre, a leading architectural practice with offices in London and Hong Kong. He has led the design on many of the practice’s cultural, commercial, and infrastructure projects and has a particular interest in multi-disciplinary efforts where architectural creativity and engineering principles can be combined. His publications include The Architecture of Bridge Design and the practice’s Exploring Boundaries and Works monographs.

Eyre has taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and the Illinois Institute of Technology and he has lectured at home and internationally, including at Yale, Berkeley, the Bauhaus, the Soane Museum, the RIBA and at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford.

Refreshments will be served.

Sarah Thomas, Harvard Library. This talk is meant to be the first in a series of new visions for library spaces